


All Our Sunsets

by Topaz_Eyes



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Ficlet, M/M, Slow Dancing, Time Travel, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-09
Updated: 2008-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/pseuds/Topaz_Eyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In that moment--that crazy, impossible moment--Jack wants to pull the Captain with him back to the present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Our Sunsets

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogue at the beginning from "Captain Jack Harkness." Thanks to [](http://karaokegal.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://karaokegal.livejournal.com/)**karaokegal** for looking it over!

_Jack! We need to get out!_  
Jack, you have to! We need you!  
I have to go. It's my duty.

Toshiko is standing in front of the rift, yelling at him to go. In the whirl of the time storm, the Captain is nodding his understanding and goodbye. And Jack is following Tosh's voice, towards the light and his own time, when he stops and turns around.

In that moment--that crazy, impossible moment--Jack wants to pull the Captain with him back to the present.

In the centre of the chaos, time expands like a telescope, and Jack sees--he _sees_\--himself and the Captain, hurtling towards the future. The Captain would not have to die in his sortie tomorrow. Jack would grab his hand, they would land in present-day Cardiff, and a new life would begin. For both of them.

They would fight together for Torchwood, side by side. They would drink Guinness together in the pub, side by side. They would sleep together side by side (in every sense of the word).

Jack would give the Captain back what was rightfully his.

He would tell the Captain his name--his real name. He would hear it whispered in his ear in the stealth of surveillance; shouted in his face in the heat of anger; murmured against his lips in ecstasy. Jack would no longer have to hide behind a dead man's face. After so many long years, he would reclaim his past too, no longer out of time, but back in it.

For as long as Time permitted, he would not be alone; he would have the Captain with him. While the Captain would grow old, and Jack would not, there would still be a lifetime of sunsets together; and when he died, Jack would bury him, facing the sun. At their final sunset, he would have a drink in his honour.

Time contracts again, and Jack is back, back in1941, in the dance hall in front of the Rift. Tosh is still yelling, the Captain is still standing, the crowd is still watching, but is fading into the distance of memory. The Captain is fading too, and there is only this moment left--when hope ends and reality begins--when Jack knows what he must do.

But not without a final goodbye.


End file.
